aesanders, have you ever actually had Himalayan blackberries on your property? During peak growth season, they can grow six inches per day. You go on a two week vacation, and when you come back, you've got blackberries with 1/2 inch diameter trunks where you used to have bare dirt. Last year, we had one area cleaned out, and I ignored it. I thought it was free of blackberreies, but this spring I went in there and holy camole - a blackberry canopy arched over my head - they had completely encircled a hedge of rosebushes! A string cannot deal with them. Somehow or another, you must have a device that's capable of a blade. My neighbor has a string trimmer with brush cutter attachment and says it's about three minutes from string to blade or blade to string - doesn't sound too bad, really. I figure I'll set it up with string, and do everything that can use a string one weekend, then set up with blade the next weekend, and hopefully just do weekly touch-up during growing season with the blade. Maybe you're right that for initial clearing, I need something bigger - I'll find out soon enough. But I am very certain that a string will be inadequate for routine maintenance. I can't imagine keeping after these blackberries with just a string...a blade is going to be required. Himalayan blackberries are a non-indigenous invasive species that, so far, seems to be concentrating on the Pacific Northwest...have never heard of them on the eastern seaboard. I used to live in Georgia, and they are much more invasive than, for instance, Kudzu. Here is a link that might be useful: Description of Himalayan Blackberries

Thank you again mike_home you last response was also helpful. Thank you to tigerdunes too. I have read several of your post during the research and they have been the basis of my research. mike_home, for heating I did use 70F which is our daytime setting. When you say two 16x25x1 filters, do you mean side by side or back to back? BTW, zoning can be a modular task and can be done separately later too? Actually, relative to Massachusetts, our electrical rates are low hence this suggestion and solution to use electric by the installer. As mentioned in the other post our electric is 11.39 cents. Following is the calculations again from the other post. 1. For Oil at $4.00 per gallon $36.09 per Million BTU. 2. For Electric furnace/backup heat at $0.1139 per KWH $34.06 per Million BTU. 3. For Heat Pump with HSPF 12 (Bryant Extreme) at $0.1139 per KWH $9.49 per Million BTU. As you can see the more we stay on the heat pump for heating the better we do cost wise. The cost difference for heat pump between say 5 ton ($4,389) and 4 ton ($4,096) is not much. Similarly, for air handler 5 ton ($1,989) versus 4 ton ($1,829) is not much. These numbers I found on another website. The installer, as far as I can tell is quite knowledgeable. He has definitely installed these heat pumps at other places. He gave me two references and one more might be possible. I will check how many he has done. I did research many posts about the "demand defrost:" topic and would have preferred to have it to, unfortunately as noted by others too, for some reason Bryant/Carrier did not implement it in their systems. I am nervous because tigerdunes recommended it very strongly for new installs. I read that one post by one person who fine tuned it to basically eliminate the use of heat strips and defrost cycle practically from his run time, but he lives somewhere where south (FL?) he rarely sees low temperature nights/days. I will though try his techniques to fine the system too, if we go this route. Because I don't want to have unnecessary defrost cycles going. I will try to get more quotes and get back here with the information. Also if I do go this route, I will try to remember to update this after at least one winter. Tigerdunes, great, it is relief to know the ducts are okay. If there are any other heat pumps experts who are willing to give their input, I would appreciate it a lot. Does anybody know if it is possible for this heat pump to be configured to disable the blower during defrost cycle such that it will not blow cold air into the house? Thank you all very much for all the help.

I have the same washer. I won't go into the problems I had only to say that I supposedly needed a new control board and was told it was on backorder for several months. I was having an LF code problem. Anyway, I was fit to be tied as this was a new machine and had never worked correctly when using a hot wash. When I found out about the part being on back order, I called the warranty section at Maytag (used the 1-800-688-9900). Find out if the part has been requested by your repair people, when it is to be shipped and make sure to get the person's name you are talking to. If you call back, ask for that person. You can order the part yourself and have it shipped to the place that will do the repair. Of course you hope that will solve the problem. After a valve, 2 control boards, and another valve (which was I needed), it has worked every since. Fuss, fuss, fuss if they tell you its on backorder. I amazingly got one sent out right away when I told them I would post on a Laundry forum all the problems I had with their Bravos and with the service. I don't have problems with sheets making the machine unbalanced. If you drop them in one at a time around the bottom and don't cover the middle, it works fine.

Good for you, and I hope you like them. We've had our F&P AquaSmart/AeroSmart w&d for almost three months now and are highly satisfied with them. We have model #WL37T26D and #DE62T27D. Wonderfully engineered and easy on the utilities, as well as the clothes! Spendy, but worth it to us. kcred